“The monitor shows you what John’s seeing,” Heber said. Michelle looked up and followed his gaze to a screen that was showing something. It was a view of two multi-clawed hands, one maneuvering a part into place and then holding it while the other turned something against the joint. Michelle shook her head and looked away. Somehow, just trying to imagine the scale of what was going on down there was painful. Another screen showed arms hauling their way up a ladder. Presumably that was what Bel was seeing as she climbed back to her platform.
Heber looked back at Michelle. “Well, your turn. Want to have a try?”
“Sure, see what you can,” Ohira said. “It’ll prepare you better for what we’ve got later.”
Of course Michelle wanted to try it. “You don’t think you’re going to get me out of here until I do, do you?” she told them.
Heber nodded. “Can you set us up, Doug?” he said to Corfe. “Is the other coupler ready?” Corfe nodded over his shoulder. Heber looked at Michelle and pointed to the unoccupied chair. She went over to it and sat down. Her first impulse was to make some joke about being electrocuted but she desisted, figuring they probably heard it from everyone. Corfe finished what he was doing and brought another collar over from a rack by the wall. It was hinged at the front, opening into two halves like the ends of tongs.
“It’s cold!” Michelle exclaimed as she felt the lines of metal pickups closing against the back of her neck. Ohira sat down on a regular chair, patted his jacket pockets mechanically for his cigarettes, then thought better of it.
“The collar does two things,” Heber explained while Corfe made adjustments. “First, it intercepts the motor signals going down your spinal cord. So instead of driving your muscles, they go out to the mec that you’re linked to. Second, it injects feedback from the mec in the opposite direction, which your brain interprets as coming from your own body. It’s a bit crude at present, but enough to give some feel for reaction forces, pressures in major joints, and things like that. The main problem is getting a sense of balance. There isn’t enough mass to make an inertial system like the ones in our ears. You’ll feel as if you’re drunk until you adapt to it. After a while you learn to use vision to compensate.”
“Comfortable, Michelle?” Corfe checked. She nodded as much as she was able. He turned away to get a headpiece for her.
“The feedback system also injects a signal to inhibit the voluntary motor system—a kind of electronic spinal block,” Heber said. “Your brain does the same thing when you dream. So when you feel yourself moving it’s really the mec, not you.”
Corfe positioned the headpiece and made connections. Suddenly the scene inside the lab vanished and was replaced by a test pattern, something like a screen saver. “Does that look okay?” Corfe’s voice asked.
Okay? It was outstanding—in a different league from any VR presentation that Michelle had ever experienced. There was no peripheral distortion, and the depth perception was perfect. The resolution of detail increased unerringly wherever she shifted her focus. She was in a world of moving colors and shapes. It was totally real. She tried turning her head; the pattern flowed sideways, then reversed when she looked back the other way. It worked the same vertically. The illusion was total. “It’s uncanny,” she said. “Are you telling me my head isn’t really moving?”
Heber’s voice answered. “You saw the others. The signals from your brain drive the display instead of your neck. Ditto for eye movement. No need for any optical tracking. . . . Okay, Doug, connect her through.”
And Michelle found herself standing on what looked like a rectangular plain about the size of a football field, lit by a blaze of white light from above and seemingly standing in the sky like a mesa in a Western movie. Chasms separated it from other, similar, square-built massifs, giving the scene the appearance of a strange Grand Canyonscape composed from straight lines and right angles. On the top of the block opposite stood the partly-built shell house that she had looked down at through the lens.